One fall day in Guthrie, Okla., Glenda Porter was preparing to call her younger sister to wish her a happy birthday. But before she could dial the number, her phone rang. It was Angie, the wife of her son, Sgt. Rusty Dunagan, who was deployed to an undisclosed location in southwest Asia.
"She asked me if I was sitting down, and I just started crying," Glenda, 55, tells The Unknown Soldiers. "I said, 'Just tell me he's alive."
This is the call that she, and every military mom with a son or daughter overseas, dreads beyond imagination.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Holding His Hand
From The Unknown Soldiers:
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We were pretty lucky. My wife got "The Visit" in 1971 when I got hit, and our daughter-in-law got the notification that our son had been wounded in Falujah.
ReplyDeleteSince the military seems to be the "family business" it was a bit easier for them to get support from each other by people who really did know what they were going through.
Dealing with the aftermath is the toughest, though.
My wife knows how lucky she is that she didn't get even a phone call. I know how lucky I was by being juuust far enough away or in juuust the right spot to only get my brainpan rattled by IED's
ReplyDeleteI probably had some TBI but everything seems ok now.
I think Guard and reserve families probably have it a bit worse than active duty. Often, they're spread out farther over a given home station area. In unfortunate irony, by virtue of so many casualties, the Casualty Assistance process has been monumentally streamlined and made more efficient and timely, from what I've seen.